“Here I should add experience has taught me that the intrinsic value of a work has nothing to do with its place in one or the other of these categories. It frequently happens that a composition which owes its existence to external influences proves very successful; while one that proceeds entirely from my own initiative may, for various indirect reasons, turn out far less well. These indirect circumstances, upon which depends the mood in which a work is written, are of the very greatest importance. During the actual time of creative activity complete quiet is absolutely necessary to the artist. In this sense every work of art, even a musical composition, is objective. Those who imagine that a creative artist can—through the medium of his art—express his feelings at the moment when he is moved, make the greatest mistake. Emotions—sad or joyful—can only be expressed retrospectively, so to speak. Without any special reason for rejoicing, I may be moved by the most cheerful creative mood, and, vice versâ, a work composed under the happiest surroundings may be touched with dark and gloomy colours.
“In a word, an artist lives a double life: an everyday human life, and an artistic life, and the two do not always go hand in hand.
“In any case, it is absolutely necessary for a composer to shake off all the cares of daily existence, at least for a time, and give himself up entirely to his art-life.
“Works belonging to the first category do not require the least effort of will. It is only necessary to obey our inward promptings, and if our material life does not crush our artistic life under its weight of depressing circumstances, the work progresses with inconceivable rapidity. Everything else is forgotten, the soul throbs with an incomprehensible and indescribable excitement, so that, almost before we can follow this swift flight of inspiration, time passes literally unreckoned and unobserved.
“There is something somnambulistic about this condition. On ne s’entend pas vivre. It is impossible to describe such moments. Everything that flows from one’s pen, or merely passes through one’s brain (for such moments often come at a time when writing is an impossibility) under these circumstances is invariably good, and if no external obstacle comes to hinder the creative glow, the result will be an artist’s best and most perfect work. Unfortunately such external hindrances are inevitable. A duty has to be performed, dinner is announced, a letter arrives, and so on. This is the reason why there exist so few compositions which are of equal quality throughout. Hence the joins, patches, inequalities and discrepancies.
“For the works in my second category it is necessary to get into the mood. To do so we are often obliged to fight with indolence and disinclination. Besides this, there are many other fortuitous circumstances. Sometimes the victory is easily gained. At other times inspiration eludes us, and cannot be recaptured. I consider it, however, the duty of an artist not to be conquered by circumstances. He must not wait. Inspiration is a guest who does not care to visit those who are indolent. The reproaches heaped upon the Russian nation because of its deficiency in original works of art are not without foundation, for the Russians are lazy. A Russian is always glad to procrastinate: he is gifted by nature, but at the same time nature has withheld from him the power of will. A man must learn to conquer himself, lest he should degenerate into dilettantism, from which even so colossal a talent as Glinka’s was not free. This man, endowed with an extraordinary and special creative talent, achieved astonishingly little, although he attained a fairly ripe age. Read his Memoirs. You will see that he worked like a dilettante—on and off, when he was in the mood. However proud we may be of Glinka, we must acknowledge that he did not entirely fulfil his task, if we take into consideration the magnitude of his gifts. Both his operas, in spite of their astonishing and original beauty, suffer from glaring inequalities of style. Side by side with touches of genius and passages of imperishable beauty we find childish and weak numbers. What might not Glinka have accomplished had he lived amid different surroundings, had he worked like an artist who, fully alive to his power and his duty, develops his gifts to the ultimate limit of perfection, rather than as an amateur who makes music his pastime!
“I have explained that I compose either from an inward impulse, winged by a lofty and undefinable inspiration, or I simply work, invoking all my powers, which sometimes answer and sometimes remain deaf to my invocation. In the latter case the work created will always remain the mere product of labour, without any glow of genuine musical feeling.
“I hope you will not think I am boasting, if I say that my appeal to inspiration is very rarely in vain. In other words, that power which I have already described as a capricious guest has long since become fast friends with me, so that we are inseparable, and it only deserts me when my material existence is beset by untoward circumstances and its presence is of no avail. Under normal conditions I may say there is no hour of the day in which I cannot compose. Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity, which—independent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying on—continues its course in that department of my brain which is devoted to music. Sometimes it takes a preparatory form—that is, the consideration of all details that concern the elaboration of some projected work; another time it may be an entirely new and independent musical idea, and I make an effort to hold it fast in my memory. Whence does it come? It is an inscrutable mystery.
“Now I will try to describe my actual procedure in composition. But not until after dinner. Au revoir. If you only knew how difficult, yet at the same time how pleasant it is to talk to you about all this!
“Two o’clock.